Bradley Wright's Blog

Time Magazine's take on Rick Warren

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:14:00 +0000

Last week, well-known Evangelical pastor Rick Warren denounced the new anti-gay law put into place in Uganda. He told pastors in Uganda pastors that the bill was "unjust, extreme and un-Christian toward homosexuals."

Now, if you were to write an article about this for a major media outlet, say Time magazine, how would you frame it? Perhaps applaud him for taking a strong moral stance? Chuckle, chuckle... there's no story in that. Instead, the Time Magazine article focused on criticizing Warren for not having done so soon enough. The article claims, without attribution, "that Warren was castigated for not denouncing the proposed law" when it was first put into place.

Now, I realize that Warren plays a prominent role in American Evangelicalism, but criticize him for not immediately commenting on other countries' domestic policy seems a bit far-fetched. Has he become the State Department? If he in fact started becoming heavily involved in other countries' law-making process, then there would probably be a story about him being too involved.

Remind me not to become a famous Evangelical pastor--too much bad press.

Technology run amok

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:00:00 +0000

I don't know if I'm ready for how much technology has entered in our life.

Last week it snowed, and my oldest son, Gus, woke up at 6 am and wanted to know if there was a snow day. He checked Facebook on his iPod Touch, and saw my status, posted 30 minutes earlier, that there was a snow day. So, he rolled over and went back to sleep.

Maybe someday we can parent without actually ever talking to our kids?

Non-overlapping magisteria

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:17:00 +0000

Last Thursday I posted some thoughts about science and religion, and several people contacted me saying that there were good ideas there. When this happens, it often means that someone else has already said it and said it better. Nick, in a comment, pointed me to the idea of Non-overlapping magisteria, and rather than try to explain it myself, I'll just give an extract from Wikipedia:

"Non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) is the view advocated by Stephen Jay Gould that "science and religion do not glower at each other...[but] interdigitate in patterns of complex fingering, and at every fractal scale of self-similarity."[1] He suggests, with examples, that "NOMA enjoys strong and fully explicit support, even from the primary cultural stereotypes of hard-line traditionalism" and that it is "a sound position of general consensus, established by long struggle among people of goodwill in both magisteria.

Gould's separate magisteria

In his book Rocks of Ages (1999), Gould put forward what he described as "a blessedly simple and entirely conventional resolution to ... the supposed conflict between science and religion."[1] He defines the term magisterium as "a domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution"[1] and the NOMA principle is "the magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the Universe is made of (fact) and why does it work in this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty)."[1]

In a speech before the American Institute of Biological Sciences Gould also stressed the political reasons for adopting NOMA as well, stating "the reason why we support that position is that it happens to be right, logically. But we should also be aware that it is very practical as well if we want to prevail." Gould argued that if indeed the polling data was correct—and that 80 to 90% of Americans believe in a supreme being, and such a belief is misunderstood to be at odds with evolution—then "we have to keep stressing that religion is a different matter, and science is not in any sense opposed to it," otherwise "we're not going to get very far.""

Thanks Nick!

Fenton river in fall

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:30:00 +0000

Here's a picture of the river down the road from us, with fall foliage.

The limitations of science in regards to religion

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:17:00 +0000

For whatever reason, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the relationship of religion and science. As you would expect of a social scientist, I’m a big fan of the scientific method. In conducting my own research and in evaluating others, I seek rigorous adherence to scientific principles. Even in my day-to-day life, I seek scientific knowledge available regarding those things important to me. For example, if I take a medicine, I want one tested with double-blind experiments, not one based on testimonies or gut-feelings or someone’s faith.

Nonetheless, science does have its limitations, and it’s worth keeping these in mind when we think about it and religion.

Science works best with empirical matters. If you can alter something and measure it, then you probably have a good topic for science. Religion, obviously, involves much of what isn’t measurable or even directly observable. This doesn’t mean that religious beliefs are less valuable or real, rather it’s difficult to use science to evaluate them.

Also, science tends to have some difficulty when applied to individual people. With groups or populations of people, it can identify trends and tendencies. With a given person, however, it’s hard using even the best measures and methods to know what they’ll do in the future or why they’ve done things in the past. Things get even more complicated with social relationships. Even the most committed scientist will probably not turn solely to science to pick a romantic partner, for example, and there’s no reason to assume that scientists have more successful relationships than others. This matters in discussions of Christianity in that it is premised on a relationship between God and His creation. If Christianity is true, then its essential nature might be better understood through poetry, literature, and analogy rather than a strict scientific method.

Finally, it’s worth noting that throughout history, and even today, there are many people groups who do not fully embrace a scientific approach to life. As such, if there is a God seeking to reveal Himself to humans, doing it through science would be relatively ineffective, and there’s no reason to assume that somehow science gets us closer (or further away) to truth about God. A rational God might be foolish to use science as a primary means of disclosing truth.

Yes, there is overlap between science and aspects of religion, but these aspects tend to be somewhat peripheral to Christianity.

Perhaps an approach of science-and-science-only misses the mark as much as one of no science.

Irv Piliavin's obituary

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:31:00 +0000

(From the LA Times)

Irving Morris Piliavin

Piliavin, Irving Morris
April 9, 1928 - November 19, 2009
Irving Morris Piliavin, 81, passed away on the morning of November 19, surrounded by members of his family, at his home in Oxnard, California. He was born to Russian Jewish immigrant parents in Los Angeles. Although not religious, he identified intensely with his Jewish heritage. From his youth, he was involved in athletic activities, first softball and baseball, then football, and later tennis. He was taking tennis lessons until a few weeks before he died, determined that in this as well as all else, he WOULD improve, and by all reports he did.
After graduating from Manual Arts High School, he attended UC Berkeley (Cal), receiving a BS in math and physics and a Masters of Social Work. After working in the field for a few years, he earned his Doctorate in Social Work Columbia University in 1961. He rose from Assistant to Associate Professor at Cal, where he received their highest honor for teaching, the Distinguished Teaching Award, in 1963.
In 1970, after two years at Penn, he moved to the University of Wisconsin, where he was Professor of Social Welfare and Sociology until his retirement in 1996. He was known as a generous mentor and a champion of the critical role of research in guiding social work practice long before it became fashionable. Among his academic research, he was well known for a ride-along study he did of the police, conducting subway studies of altruism, being the first to conduct a longitudinal study of homeless people, and for publishing various articles on control theories and rational choice analysis of crime. He continued to do research and write until very near the end of his life.
After his family, his academic work, and sports, his fourth passion was "games of chance." He took pride in the fact that he learned to count cards in blackjack so well that he was banned from all the casinos in London the year that he and his family lived in Wales. He was an accomplished poker player at all levels, from the "friendly" games he played in Berkeley, Wisconsin and Oxnard to satellite tournaments feeding the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. He went to the racetrack from his teens, when he climbed the fence at Santa Anita to get in, until 2009. He always refused to bet the favorite except when "wheeling" it with other longer shots. For that reason, the majority of the horses he bet came in second.
He is survived by his first wife, Florence, his second wife, Jane, four children, Mark, Neal, Allyn, and Libby, seven grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
A scholarship fund has been created in his honor at the University of Wisconsin Foundation. Please contact Ann Dingman for donation information at ann.dingman@ uwfoundation.wisc.edu or 608-265-9954

Religion and UConn Basketball

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:30:00 +0000

One of the joys of working at UConn is following the Women's Basketball team and their coach, Geno Auriemma. Besides being a tremendous coach, he's also a first class smart alec.

In last night's game, which UConn won, guard Carolyn Doty was driving to the basket, got knocked down, and she hit her head really, really hard.

Here's Geno's explanation of why it happened, framed in theological terms:

“I guess she landed on her head, on the side of her head or something, she got hit. I don’t know. They said she landed right on her head. And to me, that’s just God’s way of telling her ‘What the hell you driving in there and five people standing in the lane?’ Maya just threw you the ball in the middle of the floor. Maya’s running the wing on the right side and you’re in the middle of the floor. Maya just threw it to you. All right, that’s two of our players. Where’s the other three? Well, one was running this lane, the other was running that lane, and another one was trailing on this side. So, instead of catching the ball and going, ‘Oh, I just got it from here. Let me fire over here and we get a layup or a jump shot.’ No. ‘I think I’ll go back this way and drive it through three people.’ And I think as God read the play, He said ‘I’ll knock you on your ass.”

Socialization gone too far?

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:58:00 +0000

As a parent, I spend time thinking about how to socialize my boys--teaching and training them. As part of that, I try to instill my own values in them, but, I think that I may have gone too far with Floyd, my third grader.

The other day, we were talking about his friends in class, and with one friend, Floyd declared that he like this friend, but he complained that his friend "just doesn't understand sarcasm." Yep, the apple didn't fall too far from the tree there.

Scientists' belief in God

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:26:00 +0000

Often critics of Christianity (and other religions) frame the issue as one of science vs. religion. However, it appears that about half of scientists belief in God. From an article in today's LA Times by a researcher at the Pew Foundation.

"According to a survey of members of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center in May and June this year, a majority of scientists (51%) say they believe in God or a higher power, while 41% say they do not.

Furthermore, scientists today are no less likely to believe in God than they were almost 100 years ago, when the scientific community was first polled on this issue."

To read the rest of it...

Gold leaves reflected in water (pic)

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

I love photos of cool reflections in the water. This is a beaver dam in fall, with the sun hitting some maples-turning-yellow on the other bank. I think that I should have used a longer exposure, not sure...

Irv Piliavin

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:10:00 +0000

My graduate school advisor, Irv Piliavin, passed away on Thursday.

Irv shaped me as a sociologist in many ways. He had a mad-capped approach to the study of crime, poverty, and social psychology, and he was fearlessly creative in studying each topic. He's well known for conducting subway studies of altruism in which he (and his wife Jane) had a confederate fall down in need of assistance, and they recorded how many other passengers helped as a function of whether the confederate acted drunk as well. This helped us to understand the roll of deservingness in altruism.

Irv was also the first researcher to conduct a longitudinal study of homeless people. He designed a survey in which homeless people were interviewed at one point in time and then reinterviewed six months to a year later, allowing the researcher to use wave 1 measures to predict what happened to the homeless respondents by wave 2. This helped us to understand homelessness.

Irv also published various articles on control theories and rational choice analysis of crime, published in the best journals. This helped us to understand criminal behavior.

I did my Masters and Ph.D. with Irv on his homelessness research, and he was such a joy to work with and for. He has a mockingly-abrasive style with students that scared off some, but once you saw past it to the deeply caring man that he was, it was no problem. He held very high standards for his students, something that helped me greatly. I joined the sociology program as perhaps the most clueless student in Wisconsin's history, for I had never even had a sociology class or read a sociology book before enrolling in the Ph.D. program. (Don't ask what I was thinking.) Irv, over the years, moved me to being a real sociologist, for which I am so deeply grateful.

Some stories about Irv (and there are a lot of them):

When I turned in the first draft of my master's thesis, he returned it with a single comment on the front page--"This is neither accurate nor interesting." Though crushing at the time, the comment was right on, and that's been my research mantra since: Is this mostly accurate and interesting.

Another student, a year or two behind me in the program, started working with Irv, and during one research meeting, the new student admitted that he had not finished he work that Irv had given him. Irv just stared at him, then picked up the phone, and dialed the receptionist (actually pretended to dial), and said, "hello [administrator's name], cancel [this student's] funding." I was behind the student, chortling, but the student was panick stricken, until he heard me laughing.

After I finished my Ph.D., Irv and his wife Jane took Cathy and me out to dinner, and at the end of the meal, Irv announced that he would pay for me to to get a tattoo and so we went down the street and looked around a tattoo parlor. Thankfully I didn't, but he was ready.

I got to have breakfast with Irv and Jane last year at a conference, and it delighted my heart to see him again.

I, and many others, will miss him, and we're so much better off for having known him.

What? Another mean-spirited New Atheist?!

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Richard Dawkins, apparently not wanting to be left behind by Christopher Hitchens hyperbole, takes his own shots at the Catholic Church:

"Rome is possibly "the greatest force for evil in the world," Dawkins announces, "a disgusting institution" that is "dragging its flowing skirts in the dirt and touting for business like a common pimp."

Ah, the sweet smell of religious bigotry.

Red leaves, curved trees (pic)

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

I happened to notice some very bright red leaves along the roadside, and so I lined it up with shapes and colors in the background (that are actually 40-50 feet back). I think that it works.

A remarkably mean-spirited comment by a New Atheist

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Christopher Hitchens is one of the more prominent "New Atheists," and in a recent interview, here is his view on Mother Teresa:

"The woman was a fanatic and a fundamentalist and a fraud, and millions of people are much worse off because of her life, and it's a shame there is no hell for your bitch to go to."

Nice...

Two thoughts about this.

1) I don't know Mr. Hitchens at all, but I'd be willing to bet that he himself does little-to-nothing to help the poor. Not because he's an atheist, but because our condemnations of others often reflect our own insecurities.

2) The New Atheists, as a group, face a dilemma. They've already gotten lots of mileage about saying that they don't believe in religion and that God doesn't exist, but that message is getting stale. If they are to be widely featured in the media, they need a new message. This provides incentive to become more and more inflammatory. Maybe denouncing Mother Teresa is becoming the atheists' version of Godwin's law of Nazi analogies?

Thanks Jeff!

Searching Gus' room

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:28:00 +0000

Well, I've had my suspicions, and so today, when Gus, my high school junior son, was at school, I searched his room, and sure enough I found it. He still has Halloween candy! Excellent (and I'm sure going to miss him when he goes off to college).

Waterfall and leaves (pic)

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Michael Hout on the religiously unaffiliated

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Michael Hout has written some influential articles about the increase in the religiously unaffiliated in the 1990s. In particular, he's advanced an explanation that this increase resulted from conservative Christians' foray into partisan politics in the 1990s (e.g., Moral Majority, Christian Coalition). Here's an update of his work in this area, as summarized on the blog Immanent Frame.

******

Rethinking secularism:
Unchurched believers
posted by Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer

In 2002 we reported that the fraction of American adults with no religious preference doubled from 7 to 14 percent during the 1990s. Data from this decade show that the trend away from organized religion continues, albeit at a slower pace. Our analysis of the entire time series, presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in 2009, led us to the conclusion that the trend probably started earlier than we had thought—probably around 1985, 1986, or 1987—and that our previous estimate of the rate of change was, consequently, too high.

Click here for the rest of the article

Megachurch... the movie

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

My friend Scott Thumma is prominently featured in this movie about mega-churches. Though he's a humble research professor at Hartford Seminary by day, by night he's a movie star. Here's the trailer for it.

Ferns in fall (pic)

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 11:36:00 +0000

Yep, New England is a pretty easy place to take photographs in the fall.

Further evidence of "no religion" becoming a religion

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:23:00 +0000

It is now possible for you to become a "secular celebrant" of life's milestones such as birth or a wedding. Sign up for the training here.

Why should you do it? Well, terrible things happen if these people aren't available. In the words of the announcement:

"As we move through life, we celebrate many occasions filled with joy and love, accomplishment and striving, loss and grief. Unfortunately, the choice of persons to conduct ceremonies for these occasions is usually between religious clergy and impersonal civil officials.

For the 16% of the U.S. population not affiliated with any religion,
this can be a traumatic experience."

I can certainly understand someone not wanting a religious ceremony that doesn't fit with their beliefs, but I had never realized how traumatic it is for people to deal with impersonal civil officials. I can only hope that this training makes its celebrants very personable, so it too doesn't impose further trauma.

Thanks Jeff!

Godwin's law of Nazi analogies

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:00:00 +0000

I recently came across a law that we can all believe in: Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies.

It states that "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

Also,

"Godwin's Law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Hitler or Nazis or their actions."

Now, Godwin's law applies to the amount of people talking on-line, but we could think of variations of it, such as the distance between conversationalists on the political spectrum.

We could develop it further, but I don't want to be an analogy Nazi.

The asymmetry of Christian and atheist blogging

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:00:00 +0000

I've been reading some of the better known atheist-focused blogs recently, and I've been struck by their presentation and persuasion styles. Many of the blog posts are criticisms of Christians.

Some are rather heavy-handed insults of Christians. For example: Christianity is associated with mental illness. Others are more respectful in tone, bust still highly critical, such as Friendly Atheist (which is one of my favorites). It seems that the better the put-down of Christianity, the better the atheist blogger.

In contrast, most Christian blogs tend to focus on elaborating Christianity and urging Christians to do better. A Christian blog that posted primarily anti-atheist insults would miss the mark because part of Christianity is loving others, which usually doesn't include insulting them.

I suppose there are other reasons for this too, in part because there are far more Christians than Atheists, at least here in the U.S. (where most the bloggers that I read live). Maybe 2/3rds+ Christian and several percent atheist.

Whatever the reason, the result is an asymmetrical dialogue across the blogs. I'm not saying that's good or bad, just noticing it.

Why it's probably best that I'm not a Mormon

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:00:00 +0000

As I understand it, Mormons believe that if things go well for them, they will become Gods with their own people/ planets. Now, that being the case, it's probably best that I'm not a Mormon because I wouldn't make a very good God.

If I were a God, I would wake my people up in the middle of some random night, tell them to go outside and spin around several times and then go back to bed. Then I would laugh as over the years they would make this a ritual embedded with all sorts of meaning.

Basically, it would be a cosmic game of Simon-Says

Mormons in class II

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:00:00 +0000

When the Mormon missionaries presented in class, they had an interesting presentational strategy in terms of how to make Mormonism appealing to the listeners. Specifically, they went to lengths to present Mormonism as sort of basic Christianity+. They have the Bible, like other Christians, but they also have the Book of Mormon and modern day prophets. This seemed to accomplish two purposes: It made their religion look more beneficial, and it also made them seem less alien and strange because they too were Christian.

This Christian+ strategy worked best in the presentation, but during the questions some of the greater differences came out. Among other things, it came about that they think that they will become Gods in afterlife with their own planets or peoples to rule--which seems different from conventional Christian belief. Here's a description of that belief (though I can't vouch for its accuracy).

Another application of religion to science

bradley.wright@uconn.edu (Brad Wright) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 10:49:00 +0000

(From one of those funny things people write on tests). thanks K!